Remembering Lady Bird Johnson

Floor Speech

REMEMBERING LADY BIRD JOHNSON -- (Senate - July 12, 2007)

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, when Lady Bird Taylor met the man she would marry in the fall of 1934, her first reaction was to pull back. ``Lyndon came on very strong,'' she said. ``My instinct was to withdraw.''

And when an assassin's bullet thrust her into the national spotlight on another fall day in 1963, she withdrew again. America remembers this remarkable woman for the quiet dignity with which she let a nation and a stricken wife mourn the loss of a President they loved. And our first reaction to her in those days of mourning was gratitude.

Now we mourn her passing, after a long tumultuous life that was marked above all by quiet service and a love of beauty.

She was nothing like her husband.

Lyndon Johnson was an overpowering figure who filled up every room he entered. His personality still reverberates through these walls. But he always knew what he needed to get ahead in life, and he saw in Lady Bird the tact and gentility he saw lacking in himself.

He asked her to marry him on their first date.

And soon the aspiring politician would marry this shy and pretty rancher's daughter. Sam Rayburn said it was the best thing Lyndon Johnson ever did.

Lady Bird brought a deep love of nature from east Texas to the White House, and she shared it with America. Residents and tourists in Washington have her to thank for the natural beauty that surrounds us here and that makes us proud to call this city our Nation's Capital.

Millions of travelers and commuters have her to thank for the flowers that line our roads. The blues, reds and yellows that light up America's highways are a living, lasting legacy to the woman who guided the Highway Beautification Act into law.

A friend to every First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt, Lady Bird Johnson stepped out of the national spotlight as quietly as she stepped into it, again respecting the national mood at another painful moment in our history.

She outlived her famous husband by more than three decades, and we didn't hear or see much of her over the years. But she'd remind us from time to time that she was still here, quietly accepting an honor for her husband or launching some good environmental work. And we were always glad to see her. She became for us a kind of living assurance that beauty and grace outlive tragedy and loss.

We will miss her. We mourn with her daughters, Lynda and Luci, and their families. And we join them in honoring a very good American life that was spent in generous service to family and country.

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